Christos Ikonomou > Quotes

“Fairy tales, you’ll say. But you know what? People need a good fairy tale every now and then. People invented fairy tales and filled them with monsters so they wouldn’t become monsters themselves. Because the truth can turn you into a monster. You have to become a monster if you want to withstand the truth.”
― Christos Ikonomou

“There are certain things it's hard to pull out from inside. Very hard. Impossible. It's like asking someone to cry from only one eye.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Κάτι θα γίνει, θα δεις

“Strange how things sometimes turn out. You grow up and experience things and read books and get to know people and places and arrive at an age that you used to believe in, and then in the end it seems that everything in life is a matter of luck, that your life and everyone's life is a small inside-out universe through which everything moves blindly and without purpose, a universe without a god, without rules, without purpose - chaos. And then something happens to shake that belief and you start to wonder whether you might have made a mistake, if there might in fact be something that gives meaning to the chaos, if there might be some secret thread that ties everything in your life together, a secret thread that ties your life to the lives of others. And you get scared. You get scared because while it might be truly frightening to live in chaos it's twice as frightening to know that you live not in chaos but in a world with laws and rules that you yourself will never learn, that you're incapable of learning - no matter how hard you try, you'll never find that thin secret thread, never grasp it, never find the thing that has both beginning and end.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Κάτι θα γίνει, θα δεις

“Deep inside each carried fear and stress and worry about illness and time, which came each day like a conscientious gardener to trim off a bit of their lives.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Κάτι θα γίνει, θα δεις

“If you lose your father they call you an orphan. If you lose your wife they call you a widower. If you lose your child, what do they call you?

That’s the only if I’m afraid of.

If you lose your child, what do they call you?

If.

What?”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“...and I know it’s not terribly original, it’s nothing earth-shattering, I know it’s all been said a thousand times, but that may be true of everything in life that really matters, and anyhow, just because something isn’t original doesn’t mean it isn’t true, in fact maybe that’s how the truth usually is – monotonous, boring, not original at all.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“The interviewer asked how she knew about all those things if they’d happened so long ago and the girl said that the truth of a story lies not in its adherence to the facts but in its moral character.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Something Will Happen, You'll See

“The world is constructed in such a way as to relieve each of us of the responsibility of doing any personal good. We’re all free to do bad in a thousand ways, but good is always someone else’s affair. In our societies, the state has a monopoly on good. In order for a society to function in even the most basic way, the state has to have a monopoly on violence – but even more crucial is for the state to have a monopoly on good.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“What do you think a man's greatest enemy is? Death? Money? Not at all. It's fear. That's our worst enemy. Fear. Fear.”
― Christos Ikonomou

“...he thinks how he'd like to have a foot in his brain, a steel foot wearing a steel boot so he could kick pain and bitterness far away, each time they came he could kick away betrayal, and despair, and bad people, harsh people, the kind of people who cut love to their own size and not to the size of love itself, people who say I love on Monday and by Tuesday won't give you a second glance, say I can't live without you on Monday and by Tuesday say I can't stand you anymore, on Monday say we'll get through this together and by Tuesday say you have to stand on your own two feet, we all have to take responsibility for ourselves, on Monday say I want us to live together forever and by Tuesday say what do you mean I came into your life, fucked everything up, and now I’m leaving like nothing ever happened, what do you mean, I don’t understand – you think I misled you or something? – people who say you’re my forever person on Monday and by Tuesday say you’re getting too clingy, you’re asking too much, don’t text me anymore, don’t call, people who laugh with all their heart while yours drips blood, who watch TV calmly at night until they fall asleep without a care in the world, while you stare through the window at the darkness and feel that darkness swallowing you up, people who forget you overnight and spend their days and nights with friends in cafés and bars , while you remember everything – each moment, each word, each kiss, each night, each day – you remember each whisper, each cry, each embrace, each smile, each laugh, you remember, remember, remember, and you struggle, your hands dipped in blood, your heart soaked in blood, your eyes soaked in clear, crystalline blood, you struggle, every hour, every moment, every morning, every night, to eradicate everything you remember from your body and heart and mind, to uproot everything your body and heart and mind remember, you struggle to douse with blood the blaze that consumes you, you struggle not to remember, you struggle to forget the sweetness in those eyes that gazed into your eyes, the taste of that other mouth when it kissed yours, the smell of that other body tangled with yours, you struggle not to remember, to not remember. You struggle to learn to not remember.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“...power is synonymous with its own corruption, which is to say power equals corruption – and in the same way, truth is synonymous with its own transgression. Which means that in order to see the whole truth, you need to transgress it. In order to see truth in its entirety you have to get some distance, just as in order to see all of Earth, you have to travel thousands of kilometers into space.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“Becoming poor isn’t what breaks you. What breaks you is remembering that you didn’t used to be poor. That’s what breaks you.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“But what good is pride, really? Pride is a tree with rotten roots: if the wind blows, it falls. What we need is love. You have to love your land, feel for it, that’s what matters.”
― Christos Oikonomou

“The most frightening thing isn’t death but memories.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Something Will Happen, You'll See

“What it’s like to work and save and dream and have those dreams melt like ice, as if there were special hands that existed in this world just for that – to hold the dreams of poor people and squeeze them until they melted like ice.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Something Will Happen, You'll See

“...when you’re young, you plan for the future, and when you’re old, you’re nostalgic for the past. So the whole joy of life disappears, the joy of the here and now. Feeling nostalgic for the past, planning for the future. Planning for the past, feeling nostalgic for the future. Today gets caught in a vise between tomorrow and yesterday, and it writhes and dies.”
― Christos Ikonomou, Το καλό θα 'ρθει από τη θάλασσα

“I remember us watching and saying that women are the gears that make the Earth turn, and then we said how scary it all was, how scary to struggle to build a life for yourself all over again from the beginning, trying to banish the greates of all fears, which isn't the fear of death but the fear of life, the fear of living, the fear of living a life in fear, the fear of life that make us die a little bit every day.”
― Christos Ikonomou